5.  The applicant was born in 1926 and lives in Barcelona.
6.  From 1 November 1952 to 30 June 1991, when he reached retirement age, the applicant worked as a minister of the Evangelical Church. During his years as a minister, he received remuneration from the Evangelical Church. However, the Church did not pay any social security contributions on his behalf, as there was no provision in Spanish law for it to do so.
7.  The applicant had previously worked as an employee between 1 January 1944 and 15 October 1946. After being ordained he again worked as a salaried employee from 13 March 1974 to 9 September 1978, while carrying out his duties as a minister.
8.  The applicant applied to the National Social Security Agency (INSS) for a retirement pension. By a decision of 26 October 2004 the INSS rejected his application on the grounds that he had not completed the minimum period of pensionable service, that is, 15 years (5,475 days). Added together, the two periods during which the applicant contributed, between 1944 and 1946 and between 1974 and 1978, totalled 2,560 days.
9.  The applicant asked the INSS to reconsider his case. In two decisions of 15 March and 23 May 2005 the INSS again rejected the applicant’s claims, confirming its initial decision.
10.  The applicant brought proceedings against the INSS before the Employment Tribunal to secure a retirement pension. He alleged that he was being discriminated against in so far as the legislation provided for Catholic priests to receive a retirement pension as they were part of the general social security scheme.
11.  In a judgment of 12 December 2005 Barcelona Employment Tribunal no. 33 allowed the applicant’s claims and ordered the INSS to pay him a retirement pension. Analysing the changes in the legislation on the subject, the court considered that the law clearly treated Catholic priests more favourably than Evangelical ministers, which was contrary to the secularity of the State enshrined in the Constitution of 1978.
12.  The court noted that even prior to the promulgation of the Constitution the first paragraph of Article 1 of Royal Decree 2398/1977 of 27 August 1977 had already established that priests and ministers of all faiths and churches registered with the Ministry of the Interior should be treated as salaried employees and be covered by the social security scheme. However, the second paragraph of that same Article specified that this was for immediate application only in respect of Catholic priests, which was done by order of the Ministry of Health and Social Security on 19 December 1977. Two subsequent Royal Decrees (nos. 487/1998 of 27 March 1998 and 2665/1998 of 11 December 1998) provided for Catholic clergy and priests who left the priesthood or ceased their religious activities to be able to count all their years of service with the church towards the years of contributions necessary to qualify for a retirement pension, provided that they made the capital payments corresponding to those years. Evangelical Church ministers were brought into the scheme twenty-two years after their Catholic counterparts, by Royal Decree 369/1999 of 5 March 1999, although they were not given the same possibility as Catholic priests of making up the missing annuities to qualify for a retirement pension. The court observed that by the time this decree took effect the applicant had ceased his pastoral activities, and according to the provisions of the decree his years as a minister could not be taken into account in calculating his years of contribution. The court considered that depriving the applicant of access to a retirement pension in the same conditions as those enjoyed by Catholic priests violated his right to equal treatment and freedom of worship enshrined in the Constitution. The court referred to Articles 6 and 7 of the Judicature Act (Ley Orgánica del Poder Judicial LOPJ) (see paragraph 16 below) and noted that Article 9 (2) of the Spanish Constitution stated: “It is the responsibility of the public powers to promote conditions so that liberty and equality of the individual and the groups he joins will be real and effective, to remove those obstacles which impede or make difficult their full implementation, and to facilitate participation by all citizens in political, economic, cultural, and social life”. Consequently, in the interest of the applicant’s fundamental rights the court considered that the provisions applied to Catholic priests – particularly Royal Decrees 487/1998 and 2665/1998 – could be applied to the applicant by analogy, enabling him to accumulate the minimum number of years of contribution thanks to his years as a minister, provided that he paid the capital corresponding to those missing years. It awarded the applicant a retirement pension from 22 July 2004 onwards, on the basis of 398.44 euros (EUR) a month.
13.  The INSS lodged a súplica appeal against that decision. By a judgment of 26 July 2007 the High Court of Catalonia set aside the first-instance judgment. It noted that Evangelical Church ministers had been included in the general Social Security scheme by Law 24/1992 of 10 October 1992 approving the cooperation agreement between the State and the Federation of Evangelical religious entities of Spain (FEREDE). The right of Evangelical Church ministers to contribute and to receive the corresponding benefits had thus come into being under that law and the practical conditions of their integration in the general Social Security scheme had been laid out in Royal Decree 369/1999. In the instant case the court observed that the applicant had reached retirement age in 1991, prior to the enactment of Law 24/1992, which would have allowed him to pay Social Security contributions in order to be entitled to a pension. The fact that the applicant’s previous years of pastoral activity could not be taken into consideration was not the result of inactivity on the part of the State but of a lack of legislation because of the failure of the State and the various Evangelical Church authorities to reach an agreement. In the light of these considerations the court deemed that the applicant did not satisfy the statutory conditions to qualify for a retirement pension, which was a matter of ordinary law and not of discrimination in comparison with the situation of Catholic priests.
14.  The applicant lodged an amparo appeal with the Constitutional Court. By a decision notified on 29 September 2009 that court declared the appeal inadmissible on the ground that it lacked the constitutional importance provided for in Article 50 § 1 b) of the Institutional Act on the Constitutional Court.